Ah ah! It happened to me with my D-70: there was a 'reset' procedure written by hand on the manual of the unit i purchased... i HAD to try it! LOL!
I had cold sweat when i understood it was an hard reset. Happily, digital synth only needed a midi dump of sysex to be reloaded with soundbank. It was just a matter of finding an owner of the same synth to dump it into the Atari and have it back to factory state...
Meanwhile I learned a lot about programming from that mistake: i had to reprogram some patches by myself and this turned my sound design obsession on... it never stopped since!
Ahh yes, the dreaded hard reset. On the DX7II it was a simple matter of putting in the 3.5" floppy and dumping it. I had to do that after replacing the dead, soldered in coin battery on the MB. Not easy to do on those.
I have a Motif ES workstation with several expansion boards ie. 8 operator FM synth, percussion and grand piano collection. The sequencer is amazing on this KB and so easy to use live. I also bought the AIEB2 expansion for sampling and multiple direct outs. Those are very hard to find nowadays.
I also had a Casio CZ1000. It had very unique sounding patches. I ended up sampling it with the Emulator II. The main reason I bought it was due to Depeche Mode using them live along with the cheaper Emax. Problem with those was the slow loading OS from floppy until they later installed HDs with the OS on them. The first gen Emax had analog filters and sounded really gritty. Horrible UI as well.
Speaking of DM, most people like their newer albums but I don't really like anything past Violator. They became very guitar driven when Alan Wilder left the band. My favorite album is Some Great Reward. Ultra was produced by Tim Simenon and was the only newer album without Alan Wilder I liked. TS also produced Neneh Cherry's amazing Raw Like Sushi album.
Korg was a weird company. The MS20 was a great little simple synth. Midge Ure / Ultravox and OMD wouldn't have sounded the same without it. The M1 was the big nail in the coffin for many of the older analog synths. That synth was all over 90s music. House, techno and trans was defined by the M1. The sequencer was easy to use. The brass and pad patches really popped on that KB.
You of course can't forget Trevor Horn /Art of Noise. He produced alot of great 80s synth music. The Fairlight CMI was his baby. Beatbox was the big club song from him. Propaganda was own of my favorite bands at the time. Most people never heard of them as they were a German band.
Speaking of Trevor Horn, the extended club version of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Relax was an insane hit and it really slammed on a good club system with a battery of FLHs. The bass in thd breakdown of that song was so amazing. I had two copies of that 12" of which I just went back and forth with that breakdown part for several minutes. The dance floor was always full when that 12" was played.
Blue Monday was another one of those pivotal songs which defined the 80s. Who'd have though a malfunctioning Oberheim DMX would lead to one of the biggest 80s electronic music tracks of all time. New Order had a strange lineup of people and had a very noodly style with alot of droning guitar lines. The Joy Division sound wasn't my cup of tea at the time. Still a very good band though.
By far my favorite 80s artist is Thomas Dolby. Sad that most people remember him by Blinded Me With Science. He was so much more of a musician than that song gave him credit for. Golden Age of Wireless, The Flat Earth and Aliens Ate My Buick were amazing albums. The PPG wave was an incredible synth (when it worked).
The biggest problem with the older synths was the use of proprietary oscillator and filter chips. Those CEM ICs were constantly failing on the Jupiter synths and very hard to find, even back then. Many of the digitally controlled analog oscillator and filter synths were nightmares for techs to deal with. The Jupiter 8 was IMO the hardest synth to work on. It had ALOT of quirks and issues. We sure did put up with alot of crappy, glitchy and flaky gear back then with everything changing so quickly. We sure suffered alot before we ended up with non volatile flash memory.
I have a Motif ES workstation with several expansion boards ie. 8 operator FM synth, percussion and grand piano collection. The sequencer is amazing on this KB and so easy to use live. I also bought the AIEB2 expansion for sampling and multiple direct outs. Those are very hard to find nowadays.
I also had a Casio CZ1000. It had very unique sounding patches. I ended up sampling it with the Emulator II. The main reason I bought it was due to Depeche Mode using them live along with the cheaper Emax. Problem with those was the slow loading OS from floppy until they later installed HDs with the OS on them. The first gen Emax had analog filters and sounded really gritty. Horrible UI as well.
Speaking of DM, most people like their newer albums but I don't really like anything past Violator. They became very guitar driven when Alan Wilder left the band. My favorite album is Some Great Reward. Ultra was produced by Tim Simenon and was the only newer album without Alan Wilder I liked. TS also produced Neneh Cherry's amazing Raw Like Sushi album.
Korg was a weird company. The MS20 was a great little simple synth. Midge Ure / Ultravox and OMD wouldn't have sounded the same without it. The M1 was the big nail in the coffin for many of the older analog synths. That synth was all over 90s music. House, techno and trans was defined by the M1. The sequencer was easy to use. The brass and pad patches really popped on that KB.
You of course can't forget Trevor Horn /Art of Noise. He produced alot of great 80s synth music. The Fairlight CMI was his baby. Beatbox was the big club song from him. Propaganda was own of my favorite bands at the time. Most people never heard of them as they were a German band.
Speaking of Trevor Horn, the extended club version of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Relax was an insane hit and it really slammed on a good club system with a battery of FLHs. The bass in thd breakdown of that song was so amazing. I had two copies of that 12" of which I just went back and forth with that breakdown part for several minutes. The dance floor was always full when that 12" was played.
Blue Monday was another one of those pivotal songs which defined the 80s. Who'd have though a malfunctioning Oberheim DMX would lead to one of the biggest 80s electronic music tracks of all time. New Order had a strange lineup of people and had a very noodly style with alot of droning guitar lines. The Joy Division sound wasn't my cup of tea at the time. Still a very good band though.
By far my favorite 80s artist is Thomas Dolby. Sad that most people remember him by Blinded Me With Science. He was so much more of a musician than that song gave him credit for. Golden Age of Wireless, The Flat Earth and Aliens Ate My Buick were amazing albums. The PPG wave was an incredible synth (when it worked).
The biggest problem with the older synths was the use of proprietary oscillator and filter chips. Those CEM ICs were constantly failing on the Jupiter synths and very hard to find, even back then. Many of the digitally controlled analog oscillator and filter synths were nightmares for techs to deal with. The Jupiter 8 was IMO the hardest synth to work on. It had ALOT of quirks and issues. We sure did put up with alot of crappy, glitchy and flaky gear back then with everything changing so quickly. We sure suffered alot before we ended up with non volatile flash memory.
I also had two of the Mini Korgs, both Univox branded from before Korg was a brand name, a non functional Aries modular that was built from a kit and never worked, and a very early ARP white faced Odyssey that had an appetite for RCA CA3080 chips. I had both Mini Korgs wired together so that they could be played from one keyboard if desired. I got the Aries at a hamfest for $100 and could never figure out what was wrong. It would play, but sounded really sick and drifted wildly, but all supply voltages remained constant. I suspected some high frequency oscillation somewhere since it often interfered with an AM radio or OTA TV set that was nearby. I eventually lost my patience and sold it.
I bought the Odyssey from the owner's parents who had just got it back from its second or third trip to ARP for service. Their son had bought a Mini Moog while waiting for it to return. It worked great for a while, but after a few months it became quite noisy. I took it apart to find that the CA3080 chip in the VCA had been changed, probably more than once and the soldering was not so great. I swapped the CA3080 in the VCA with the one in the Sample and Hold and the noise was gone ......for a while. By this time the round metal can CA3080's were no longer available at Digikey, which was still a small time operation. I got a couple of the 8 pin DIP versions and skywired them into the synth. Those chips never failed. I had expanded the Odyssey with an ARP "Little Brother" which was ARP's take on the SEM. Unfortunately I sold ALL of the analog stuff in the digital 80's and got a Korg DW8000.
I have the Behringer Model D, the Neutron, a rack mount Deepmind 12, and a K-2. I think the Behringer clones of vintage unaffordable synths is cool, but I think they went too far with the Swing, a blatant copy of a current product, the Keystep, which I have. I decided that I would not buy any more Behringer stuff.
Looking at the Behringer Pro-1, I have to think, could I build anything similar for under $300? No, I could not which is why I got the "D" in the first place. I took the D apart and compared the schematic to the Mini. The analog circuitry it a good copy of a Mini Moog done with SMD components. The Sequential Pr😵ne uses old school 3340, 3320 and 3310 chips. I am assuming that the clone uses similar chips from Cool Audio since Cool Audio is a Behringer company. Alfa Rpar chips should work, but it would be hard to build anything like the Pro-1 for what I can buy it for. My only question is whether or not it's significantly different from the Neutron which is based on the same chip set to justify spending $300.
And nobody has yet mentioned the EVIL Roland Red Glue Disease. I spent a week tearing down and rebuilding the keyboard on a JV1000 a while back. I needed no new parts other than a coin cell backup battery for the job, just lots of patience two weeks, and some drain cleaner (concentrated sodium hydroxide)
Post #3099 here:
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/what-did-you-last-repair.313739/page-155
@Tubelab_com ,
I had same thoughts as yoirs about the Pro- One: could it be diyable for an affordable price and definitely no, it isn't possible. Yes the chips in mine are Cool Audio stuff.
Overall i think Neutron and Pro One should be close sonically but it's in the interface and modulation capability they differ. Like you i'm a great fan of modulars but i have to admit that the 'limited' option of the Pro-One is all what it's about: it kind of focus on ( more or less) musical sounding design which modular doesn't for me ( i most of the time end up with dentist tools inspired sounds with modulars... LOL!).
It speed up sound design process and makes me focus more on music that sound design. But that's me, i learned it's all about interacting with the gear and some people feels at home with interface i can't ( and the other way around!).
About the Mini, did they used the discrete architecture? The only really close 'clone' i've heard were Studio Electronics SE1. And they offered much more versatility imo. Too bad they are so pricey in EU.
Did you ever finished your tube based vcf or still a work in progress?
I really love the results of tube synth. And with so much recallable gear i need impredictability/randomness in my creating process.
I had a paradigm shift some years ago: decided to keep away from computers for composition process. I was stuck with habits, used more my eyes than my ears and needed to go back to the fun of my early years with hardware seq ( they werent as easy as soft for midi editing but... i was more adventurous with them). So i invested into RS7000 which is a RM1X ( groovebox) on steroid including a sampler and synthesis engine derived from the Motif series.
In that i can only agree with Profiguy, those are marvelous workstations. The RS have the same kind of seq than the Rm1x which is very interactive and fun to play. At least to me. I kinda find pleasure i lost when looking at a computer screen. Not as fast for sure but way more fun.
I'm jealous about the extension as it would make the sampler inside the RS much more usable to me but i don't really need it as it can drive one of my ( way to many) samplers anyway. I discovered too that computer based midi seq are not as tight as this hardware one!
What a schocking enlightment even with good quality midi interface ( Motu)! Even my Atari is better about this than a 2k€ computer... ( yes i still have an Atari Mega4 running with cubase and logic ( Notator)!).
I will take a look at the arpegiator, i never really explored it: i like the one into the Waldorf MicroQ ( it's VERY powerful) and the Virus ( this one is my go to synth for 15 years, can do almost anything and sound SICK).
I had same thoughts as yoirs about the Pro- One: could it be diyable for an affordable price and definitely no, it isn't possible. Yes the chips in mine are Cool Audio stuff.
Overall i think Neutron and Pro One should be close sonically but it's in the interface and modulation capability they differ. Like you i'm a great fan of modulars but i have to admit that the 'limited' option of the Pro-One is all what it's about: it kind of focus on ( more or less) musical sounding design which modular doesn't for me ( i most of the time end up with dentist tools inspired sounds with modulars... LOL!).
It speed up sound design process and makes me focus more on music that sound design. But that's me, i learned it's all about interacting with the gear and some people feels at home with interface i can't ( and the other way around!).
About the Mini, did they used the discrete architecture? The only really close 'clone' i've heard were Studio Electronics SE1. And they offered much more versatility imo. Too bad they are so pricey in EU.
Did you ever finished your tube based vcf or still a work in progress?
I really love the results of tube synth. And with so much recallable gear i need impredictability/randomness in my creating process.
I had a paradigm shift some years ago: decided to keep away from computers for composition process. I was stuck with habits, used more my eyes than my ears and needed to go back to the fun of my early years with hardware seq ( they werent as easy as soft for midi editing but... i was more adventurous with them). So i invested into RS7000 which is a RM1X ( groovebox) on steroid including a sampler and synthesis engine derived from the Motif series.
In that i can only agree with Profiguy, those are marvelous workstations. The RS have the same kind of seq than the Rm1x which is very interactive and fun to play. At least to me. I kinda find pleasure i lost when looking at a computer screen. Not as fast for sure but way more fun.
I'm jealous about the extension as it would make the sampler inside the RS much more usable to me but i don't really need it as it can drive one of my ( way to many) samplers anyway. I discovered too that computer based midi seq are not as tight as this hardware one!
What a schocking enlightment even with good quality midi interface ( Motu)! Even my Atari is better about this than a 2k€ computer... ( yes i still have an Atari Mega4 running with cubase and logic ( Notator)!).
I will take a look at the arpegiator, i never really explored it: i like the one into the Waldorf MicroQ ( it's VERY powerful) and the Virus ( this one is my go to synth for 15 years, can do almost anything and sound SICK).
I am a retired electrical engineer who has been tinkering with electronics since childhood. Most of that tinkering has been focused on sound reproduction and creation. For me, figuring out how to make a particular "sound" is usually not too difficult especially with the tools we now have at hand in a DAW.
The Mini clone is all discrete semis and opamps. The schematic can be found by Googling "P0CQJ Schematic Diagram."
The tube synth stuff gets worked on then ignored, then worked on. The VCA design is done, the VCF is working, but I'm still not happy with it. I also have some VCF ideas that have never been done before that I want to try but haven't got to yet.
A modern computer with an operating system like Windows spends far too much time doing OS tasks that are not synchronous with the sequence being played. These will all add up to tiny variations in the sequencer's timing. I have a dedicated PC for music with very little other applications on it and I unplug the network cable whenever it is not needed, as it will grab the CPU's attention at inopportune moments.
The Mini clone is all discrete semis and opamps. The schematic can be found by Googling "P0CQJ Schematic Diagram."
The tube synth stuff gets worked on then ignored, then worked on. The VCA design is done, the VCF is working, but I'm still not happy with it. I also have some VCF ideas that have never been done before that I want to try but haven't got to yet.
A modern computer with an operating system like Windows spends far too much time doing OS tasks that are not synchronous with the sequence being played. These will all add up to tiny variations in the sequencer's timing. I have a dedicated PC for music with very little other applications on it and I unplug the network cable whenever it is not needed, as it will grab the CPU's attention at inopportune moments.
Now there were several versions of the 12". The one I have is this one
Still got my floppy disk cover version of that. And Sean of the dead still makes me laugh when they are throwing records at the zombies.
I still remember my late sister proudly telling me she had decked a heckler at a Thomas Dolby concert.
This BBC documentary has some great artist input from the pioneers of synth music in the late 70s onward. I probably watched it a dozen times already when I found it several years ago. Why do the Brits put out such good TV programs and we in the states have to put up with reruns of boring 70s police dramas?
I have to mention Daniel Miller of Mute. He has to have the most amazing stories of how fast the development of synth pop music was. I remember the Ebay auction for one of Kraftwerks original vocoders. Owning that would be like having the original Mona Lisa. Most of us are happy with the original Roland VP330. I remember hearing the intro to EWFs Lets Groove for the first time as a young kid. I saw them live in the early 80s and it blew my mind how good it sounded.
Maybe some other old farts like me might remember that ELEKTOR magazine presented a series of articles on their DIY FORMANT monophonic, modular synth in the 1970ies. If many of the chips involved, mainly those OTA's (?) used in the VCA's, weren't NLA since a long time, I'd be inclined to build one 😉.
And no, I'm really not a fan of polyphonic synths, because music obviously degraded (see Last Christmas
) with their appearance on the broad markets in the 1980ies.
Best regards!
And no, I'm really not a fan of polyphonic synths, because music obviously degraded (see Last Christmas
) with their appearance on the broad markets in the 1980ies.Best regards!
Here's some pics of my friend's Mini Korg. It came into my shop recently for some minor maintenance, mostly cleaning of switches and slider pots.
The only mods that were done was another friend of mine who builds guitars, he made the wooden ends and top out of zebrawood. I had done a previous repair on one of the keys, but other than that it plays perfectly fine. Cheers!
The only mods that were done was another friend of mine who builds guitars, he made the wooden ends and top out of zebrawood. I had done a previous repair on one of the keys, but other than that it plays perfectly fine. Cheers!
